Bowden’s ESPN colleague Buster Olney, however, passes along an anecdote which shows that, for baseball players and their teams, this is not a “major problem” at all:

Recently, a player went to a team employee and asked for some advice on whether to participate.

“I can’t say anything,” the official responded. “I do have one question for you: How do you pay the bills?”

Major League Baseball is about Major League Baseball. The WBC is an initiative that is important to the league office, but simply doesn’t compare in importance to the regular season in the minds of the teams and the players.

Yet we keep hearing stuff like this from Bowden and, last week, from Morosi. They insist that the WBC is important and that non-participation in the WBC is a “major problem.” But why? And to whom?

Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports reports Thursday that the Orioles “are said to have begun fielding calls of interest” on superstar Manny Machado and “are close to the point of seriously weighing whether to trade him.”

You’d think it would be a no-brainer for the last-place O’s to flip Machado — an impending free agent — for prospects, but Heyman notes there is “still a question whether or not longtime Orioles owner Peter Angelos” will give the go-ahead. One person familiar with the situation put it a “50-50” likelihood. Another suggested that it would take a massive return, which, sure.

Machado entered play Thursday with a sensational .328/.405/.635 batting line, 15 home runs, and an MLB-leading 43 RBI in 49 games. It’d be a real shock if he’s still wearing an O’s uniform by the end of July.

Heyman reported previously that at least nine teams made aggressive plays for Machado this winter, including the Cubs, Phillies, Dodgers, Indians, Diamondbacks, Yankees, Red Sox, White Sox, and Cardinals. A whole lot of those teams still make sense here in late May — maybe all of them except the White Sox.